Bitter Fruit for Uncertain Times
Southern trees bear a strange fruit.
Blood on the leaves and blood at the root,
Black body swinging in the Southern breeze,
Strange fruit hanging from the poplar trees.
Pastoral scene of the gallant South,
The bulging eyes and the twisted mouth,
Scent of magnolia sweet and fresh,
And the sudden smell of burning flesh!
Here is a fruit for the crows to pluck,
For the rain to gather, for the wind to suck,
For the sun to rot, for a tree to drop,
Here is a strange and bitter crop.
Billie Holiday’s hit Strange Fruit…the song’s words are as potent now as they were when they were recorded over 80 years ago. Holiday’s 1939 song, was named Time Magazine’s “Song of the Century.”
George Floyd wasn’t killed in the South, but the song’s message still rings true…racism, brutality and the killing of people because of the color of their skin remains a “strange and bitter crop.” Unable to be digested without poisoning all who taste it.
For far too long white Americans have had black men and women’s blood on our hands and
“blood at the root” of our economy.
If the Coronavirus has taught us anything it is how fast things can change. We don’t have to wait for 80 or 100 years (this week after over a century of wrangling, a bill, making lynching a federal crime, was finally passed by the United States Senate.) America won’t survive this decade if we don’t make radical changes to our economy, our food system, how we educate children…not to mention our criminal (in)justice system.
Abel Meerapol, a white Jewish school teacher from the Bronx, wrote Strange Fruit after seeing photographs of black men hanging from trees. A video of George Floyd murdered by a knee of a vicious cop has people of all colors, religions and races incensed. We are ready to listen to each other and no longer content to inhale the sweet and fresh scent of magnolias ignoring the smell of burning flesh.
In my practice this week I am contemplating the speed of change, the anxiety that accompanies fear of change and the desire to grasp at things that we erroneously think of as permanent. If I become more comfortable with change maybe I can help my students do so as well.
I am also contemplating the many ancient words for love…in Greek the word for love of mankind is phileo. In Sanskrit, one of the similar words is priti. Only love, in all its guises, will get us through this time of upheaval and push us towards a more peaceful and pastoral, or idealized vision, of our shared future.